Flexing your resilience muscle by Jeff Lancaster

With the recent selections for the Queensland Under 15 and Under 18 trials, many young athletes who missed out on selection may be experiencing moments of loss, trauma, adversity and even worthlessness. These feelings are real, and they are relative to the athlete’s perspective and their resilience.

In sport, we often hear coaches, players and parents talk about resilience. But what it actually is and how you develop it are mostly left unanswered.

Resilience is all about being able to cope with adversity and push through challenges in the pursuit of opportunities. According to Rick Hanson, author of Resilient, the path your life takes depends on just three causes:

1. how you manage your challenges
2. how you protect your vulnerabilities
3. how you increase your resources.

These causes are located in three places: your world, your body and your mind. All of these are important, but developing resources in your mind has a unique ability to improve performance.

Consider this comment from Mark Knowles, in response to recovering from what many athletes would consider serious adversity: “I’ve used getting injured as an opportunity to improve something else. When I broke my ankle and did my foot, I used it as an opportunity to do more upper body work, get stronger on the ball with my core.”

That’s the very essence of resilience. It’s about coping with adversity - and that adversity is relative to a person’s condition and experience.

Knowles is also a perfect example of a growth mindset athlete, and they tend to be quite resilient, optimistic and opportunity-focused. Whereas fixed mindset athletes are often comparison-based, may look to blame others for failures, tend to view feedback as criticism and often have a deterministic view of the world.

Interestingly, resilience is also contagious. When an athlete is respected and admired by their peers, they tend to embrace and embody the traits and perspectives of those other athletes. Consider Knowles again and the players and behaviour under his watch as leader of the Kookaburras.

Athletes who are typically low in resilience are often fixed mindset, competitive-focused, ego-oriented and emotionally under-developed. They often place an over-importance on the outcome and may make determinations on their self worth based on whether or not those outcomes are achieved.

For example, if a player is selected in a representative team, they may feel worthy. Conversely, if they are not selected, they may feel worthless. This worthy-worthless identity spectrum is a dangerous place for athletes to occupy. They link the outcome to their identity, which essentially means that their self worth is connected to a dangerous definition of success. This thinking style also lends itself to personal comparison, competition and castigation.

Athletes high in resilience are often growth mindset, future-focused, learning explorative and more likely to embrace future challenges.

These are quotes from two athletes from the same age and ability I have worked with in recent years. Consider the difference in their response to the same stimulus:

• “I’m done. I’m going to quit. I’m better than so many of those other players. This is just wrong!”
• “I was disappointed on missing selections. But I realised that if I want it badly enough, I just have to work harder.”

One sees constraints and competition. Whereas the other sees opportunity and learning. It’s relatively easy to see which athlete will develop and embrace future challenges.

It’s okay that missing selection stings or hurts a little. That’s normal when it means something to you. But it’s what you do with those feelings, how you translate them into action, that determines your ability to improve as an athlete and a person. One approach builds barriers; the other builds bridges.

To become more resilient, young athletes need a supportive environment from parents, coaches and peers that delivers consistent messages about optimism, opportunity, hope and belief.

They also need to develop autonomy and be responsible for their own actions and outcomes. This often takes time to develop, but for young athletes it can be nurtured through coaching (and more importantly, parenting).

Make no mistake, we all slide along the spectrum in our responses to stimuli. The more meaning the situation has for us (and the more emotionally we are invested) the deeper the cut. But whether we hurt or heal (and the speed at which we heal) depends largely on our resilience.

Try these tips:

View missed selection as information and not identity. Lean in to the discomfort of the journey. Seek learning and growth in the moment - they will make you want to improve. Don’t seek shame and blame in the moment - they will make you want to prove or move (away from the sport or the perceived threat to your certainty). #TheResilientAthlete

Don’t go into protecting mode - go into promoting mode. Use this Resilience Loop to help develop resilience. In response to adversity, seek to Learn from the moment, see Opportunity in the moment, be Optimistic in the moment and recognise that the moment is Passing.

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Jeff Lancaster is Hockey Queensland’s Mental Performance Coach and the developer of Changefully, a leading sports-mindset program used by athletes and teams around the world.

www.changefully.org